Re: When will cuben fiber become reasonably affordable.
on 02/04/2014 21:05:14 MST

I'm not sure that it is necessary to spend $600-$900 to get a decent cuben fiber tarp.

A couple of years ago I bought one from HMG. It was a demonstrator of the Echo I tarp, so it had probably been put up a few times. Otherwise, I have found it to be perfectly decent for my purposes. $140, I think.

I wouldn't be afraid of another one like that if I needed one.

Besides the obvious light weight advantage, I like it for being totally waterproof and for being slightly more compact when rolled up, as compared to silnylon.

Re: When will cuben fiber become reasonably affordable.
on 02/04/2014 21:13:04 MST

Re: cost of cuben tarps being "$600-900"

Where the hey are you finding these uber expensive tarps?

You can get a Zpacks Hexamid Soloplus tarp for like 280 or so total.

Having lost my full time job recently, i had to cancel my order of the above (it was hard to do), but i recently found a part time job and so bought a used MLD cuben solomid for quite reasonable (more than 50 dollars cheaper than the above).

Yeah, it's still a bit expensive, but characterizing it as the above is more than a bit exaggerating. It's got some nice properties, besides being light weight. Doesn't sag and doesn't absorb moisture. It's easy to patch and repair in the field (tape).

It's also easy to modify with tape. For example, my solomid is my winter tarp and so i'm going to add an IR reflective liner to be used with candles--with simple tape. In the summer (but i don't summer backpack too much all in all), can just flip it inside out to reflect the Suns rays and heat away.

I can't give you a hard number. If you hold two tarps in your hands, you can tell the difference. Compact volume does not mean a lot to most backpackers. However, the more compact your gear is, the more gear you can cram into a smaller backpack, and the smaller one probably weighs less than the bigger one.

Great question about the patent ... even without the patent though, I suspect that the cost to setup the manufacturing process and hire the talent to build and run such an operation would require an industry bigger wanting cuben bigger than ultralight packers / hangers to make it a worthwhile pursuit ...

As it stands, I don't see sailboats using Cuben anymore, in fact, I don't believe I've ever seen one, Mylar composites / Dacron seem to be fairly common ..... and the high end racing boats are even using solid wings ... which suggests there may be a trend away from composites / cloth type sails altogether on the high end racing boats that cuben was originally designed for ... the point being, less demand for Cuben probably suggests less of an incentive for new market entrants, should patents be a non issue..... but who knows ....

https://sites.google.com/site/sailclothscience/sailcloths/dacron

From 2007: What happened to cuben fiber sails? http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=51648

Just a note that some cuben shelters are larger in volume when packed than a comparable silnylon one. I'm comparing two mids that I currently have; it's the cuben mid's reinforcement patches, especially the "cone" at the top of the pyramid, that is a less-pliant material that doesn't fold as well as an all-silnylon mid. If volume was the sole criteria, I'd pick the silnylon. However, the volume of the cuben isn't something that would stop me from carrying it.

This probably isn't the case with two comparable flat tarps where there is less "other" material like zippers and heavier reinforcement or structural patches.

"As it stands, I don't see sailboats using Cuben anymore, in fact, I don't believe I've ever seen one, Mylar composites / Dacron seem to be fairly common ..... and the high end racing boats are even using solid wings ... which suggests there may be a trend away from composites / cloth type sails altogether on the high end racing boats that cuben was originally designed for ... the point being, less demand for Cuben probably suggests less of an incentive for new market entrants, should patents be a non issue..... but who knows ...."

Mylar, Dacron, etc are basically fancy names for polyester or also commonly called PET.

Cuben incorporates same (the UHMWPE fibers are bonded between two films of mylar aka polyester/PET), but cuben doesn't any stretch to speak of, which could be a minus or issue with sails. Polyester doesn't have much innate stretch either, but can be woven in such a way to have mechanical stretch--which may be better for sails?

I saw a documentary where they were building a sail for a racing boat. They had a big curved plastic form in the exact shape that they wanted the sail to form into. They then hand built the sail on the form. They had these cool rigs where the workers would be suspended over the form while they did their work.

As new stuff is developed, the cost of producing it generally falls over time - not necessarily the price. To have the price fall as well you need either competition or price elastic demand.

I'm sure Cubic Tech has pretty much got the production of this stuff nailed down. They've been making it for close to a decade now in decent volumes. I expect the actual cost of making it is pretty low ($5/yd?). The hang up on price here is not likely cost. Rather, it remains expensive because it's more profitable to have it that way. We view cuben as premium stuff - and in some applications it is - which allows Cubic Tech to price it at whatever we will pay.

My expectation is that eventually we'll get some decent competition. Other companies will somehow circumvent patents and produce similar material, which will cause one of these companies to target the middle tier price points and thus prices will come down. Dimension Polyant might be the saviour here, but only if they can develop some lighter fabrics suitable for tarps.

Dan, the cost of making cuben is not that high. The materials are all cheaper synthetics: PET films, carbon & kevlar and spectra/dynema threads. Unlike rosin/cloth, they are very loosely woven.

The precision of the machinery is another story. 5' rollers that cannot vary more than a a few 10 thousands. I wonder what their wastage is? I suspect that it is moderatly high. Maintenence on the machinery must also be very high.

Patents, well, patents are easily subterverted by goverments or large amounts of dollars. There is really nothing new there, a loose weave of high strength fibers and plastic film making it waterproof/wind proof. Perhaps, it *could* be made with melted plastic around a core of woven threads instead of pressing plastic onto the threads. Different material, different patents. A friend experimented with extruding melted aluminum onto a high speed roller to produce aluminum foil. Different process, different patent, same result.